Capitalist Realism

1. Capitalism is the Only Game in Town

That slogan captures precisely what I mean by ‘capitalist realism’: the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it.

No Alternatives. Capitalist realism is the pervasive belief that capitalism is the only viable political and economic system, making it difficult to even imagine alternatives. This isn't just about accepting capitalism; it's about the inability to conceive of anything else. This sense of inevitability is a powerful force that shapes our thinking and actions.

Cultural Hegemony. This belief is not imposed by force but is deeply embedded in our culture, shaping our desires, aspirations, and even our dreams. It's a system that has become so naturalized that it's almost invisible, like the air we breathe. This makes it incredibly difficult to challenge or resist.

Beyond Ideology. Capitalist realism operates beyond traditional ideological arguments. It doesn't require active belief or support; it simply exists as the default setting. This makes it more insidious and difficult to combat than overt forms of propaganda.

2. Dystopian Visions Reflect Our Reality

The world that it projects seems more like an extrapolation or exacerbation of ours than an alternative to it.

Dystopia as Mirror. Dystopian films and novels, once exercises in imagining alternatives, now often reflect our current reality. Instead of presenting a radically different future, they show an intensified version of our present, where authoritarianism and capitalism coexist.

Normalization of Crisis. The "War on Terror" has normalized crisis, making emergency measures seem permanent. This creates a situation where the suspension of democratic norms becomes accepted, blurring the lines between freedom and control.

Erosion of Public Space. The destruction of public space, celebrated by neoliberals, leads to a stripping back of the state to its core military and police functions. This results in a world where internment camps and franchise coffee bars can coexist, highlighting the contradictions of capitalist realism.

3. The End of the New and Cultural Sterility

Could it be that there are no breaks, no ‘shocks of the new’ to come?

Reiteration and Re-permutation. There's a growing suspicion that the future holds only reiteration and re-permutation, with no genuine "shocks of the new." This leads to a bi-polar oscillation between the hope for something new and the morose conviction that nothing new can ever happen.

Museumification of Culture. Culture is increasingly transformed into museum pieces, with objects torn from their lifeworlds and assembled as artifacts. This process deprives cultural objects of their power, as they are no longer seen with new eyes or in their original context.

Capitalism's Consumption of History. Capitalism subsumes and consumes all of previous history, assigning monetary value to all cultural objects. This process turns practices and rituals into aesthetic objects, ironizing the beliefs of previous cultures.

4. Capitalism's Ironic Anti-Capitalism

Far from undermining capitalist realism, this gestural anti-capitalism actually reinforces it.

Corporate Anti-Capitalism. Capitalism often incorporates anti-capitalist sentiments into its products, such as Hollywood films featuring "evil corporations." This gestural anti-capitalism reinforces capitalist realism by performing our dissent for us, allowing us to continue consuming with impunity.

Interpassivity. This is the phenomenon where cultural products perform our anti-capitalism for us, allowing us to continue to participate in capitalist exchange without feeling guilty. This is a form of disavowal, where we believe capitalism is bad but continue to act as if it is not.

Overvaluing Belief. Capitalist ideology overvalues inner subjective belief at the expense of the beliefs we exhibit in our behavior. As long as we believe in our hearts that capitalism is bad, we are free to continue participating in it. This structure of disavowal is essential to capitalism's functioning.

5. The Real vs. Reality: Cracks in the System

Capitalist realism can only be threatened if it is shown to be in some way inconsistent or untenable; if, that is to say, capitalism’s ostensible ‘realism’ turns out to be nothing of the sort.

Beyond Natural Order. Emancipatory politics must always destroy the appearance of a "natural order," revealing what is presented as necessary and inevitable to be a mere contingency. What is currently called realistic was once "impossible," and vice versa.

The Real as Unrepresentable. The Real is what any "reality" must suppress, an unrepresentable X that can only be glimpsed in the fractures and inconsistencies of apparent reality. Environmental catastrophe is one such Real, a traumatic void that capitalism struggles to assimilate.

Mental Health and Bureaucracy. Mental health and bureaucracy are two aporias in capitalist realism that are not yet fully politicized. The growing problem of stress and the proliferation of bureaucracy suggest that capitalism is inherently dysfunctional, and that the cost of it appearing to work is very high.

6. Reflexive Impotence and Depressive Hedonia

They know things are bad, but more than that, they know they can’t do anything about it.

Political Disengagement. British students today appear politically disengaged, not due to apathy or cynicism, but due to a sense of reflexive impotence. They know things are bad, but they also know they can't do anything about it. This knowledge is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Depressive Hedonia. Many young people experience depressive hedonia, an inability to do anything except pursue pleasure. This is a consequence of their ambiguous structural position, stranded between disciplinary institutions and their new status as consumers.

Control Societies. Control societies operate using indefinite postponement, where external surveillance is succeeded by internal policing. This means that control only works if you are complicit with it, leading to a kind of "Control Addict" who is addicted to control itself.

7. Post-Fordism: Flexibility and Precarity

Where formerly workers could acquire a single set of skills and expect to progress upwards through a rigid organizational hierarchy, now they are required to periodically re-skill as they move from institution to institution, from role to role.

No Long Term. Post-Fordism is characterized by "no long term," where workers are required to periodically re-skill as they move from job to job. This emphasis on flexibility puts intolerable stress on family life, as values like obligation and commitment are deemed obsolete.

Cybernetization of Work. Work and life become inseparable, with capital following you when you dream. Time ceases to be linear, becoming chaotic and broken down into punctiform divisions. To function effectively, workers must develop a capacity to respond to unforeseen events and live in conditions of total instability.

Bi-Polar Disorder. The psychological conflict raging within individuals cannot but have casualties. There is a link between the increase in bi-polar disorder and post-Fordism, as capitalism itself is fundamentally bi-polar, lurching between hyped-up mania and depressive come-down.

8. Market Stalinism and Bureaucratic Anti-Production

What late capitalism repeats from Stalinism is just this valuing of symbols of achievement over actual achievement.

Bureaucratic Proliferation. Despite neoliberal rhetoric about the end of top-down control, bureaucracy has intensified, with new kinds of administration and regulation proliferating. This is a consequence of the inherent resistance of certain processes and services to marketization.

Market Stalinism. Late capitalism values symbols of achievement over actual achievement, with work becoming geared towards the generation and massaging of representations rather than the official goals of the work itself. This is a system where all that is solid melts into PR.

The Big Other. The big Other is the collective fiction presupposed by any social field. It does not know everything, and its constitutive ignorance allows public relations to function. The big Other is the consumer of PR and propaganda, the virtual figure required to believe even when no individual can.

9. The Missing Center and Corporate Impersonality

The supreme genius of Kafka was to have explored the negative atheology proper to Capital: the centre is missing, but we cannot stop searching for it or positing it.

Centerlessness of Capitalism. The closest most of us come to a direct experience of the centerlessness of capitalism is an encounter with the call center. This experience distills the political phenomenology of late capitalism: boredom, frustration, and impotent rage.

Kafkaesque Bureaucracy. Kafka's exploration of bureaucracy is not limited to totalitarianism; it is also highly relevant to the decentralized, market Stalinist bureaucracy of late capitalism. The center is missing, but we cannot stop searching for it or positing it.

Corporate Impersonality. The problem is that the model of individual responsibility assumed by most versions of ethics has little purchase on the behavior of Capital or corporations. The causes of eco-catastrophe and other global crises are impersonal structures, not individual actors.

10. Paternalism Without the Father: Spinozist Solutions

A Marxist Supernanny would of course turn away from the troubleshooting of individual families to look at the structural causes which produce the same repeated effect.

Failure of the Father. Late capitalism is marked by a failure of the Father function, with parents often failing to provide the necessary guidance and structure for their children. This is due to the increasing requirement that both parents work and the cultural emphasis on enjoyment.

Spinozist Ethics. Spinoza's rejection of deontology for an ethics based around the concept of health is relevant to late capitalism's amoral affective engineering. Freedom, Spinoza shows, is something that can be achieved only when we can apprehend the real causes of our actions.

Beyond Hedonism. While late capitalism articulates many of its injunctions via an appeal to health, it often promotes a reductive, hedonic model that prioritizes "feeling and looking good" over mental health and intellectual development. A true paternalism without the father would need to move beyond this limited view.

Last updated: January 28, 2025